Growing Gratitude: Practical Ways to Teach Kids and Teens to Give Thanks — and Why It Matters

Growing gratitude is more than saying “thank you”; it’s a habit of mind and heart that shapes how young people see themselves, others, and the world.

A growing body of research in positive psychology and developmental science links gratitude practice to better mental health, greater resilience, improved relationships, and increased prosocial behavior.

Classic experimental work by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough found that people who regularly kept gratitude lists reported higher well-being and more positive emotions than comparison groups, and subsequent studies have extended these findings to children and adolescents.

Jeffrey Froh and colleagues, for example, have shown that structured gratitude exercises can boost adolescents’ mood and social functioning.

Schools, families, and clinicians now widely promote age-appropriate gratitude activities as part of social-emotional learning (SEL) because gratitude appears to strengthen perspective-taking, reduce entitlement, and make kindness more reinforcing.

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🕰️ Ritualize It

📚 Integrate It into Learning

🌟 Encourage Public Recognition

💻 Use Technology Thoughtfully

Teaching gratitude to kids and teens focuses less on creating polished expressions of thanks and more on nurturing an orientation that notices help, values interdependence, and balances realism with appreciation.

Research shows that regular, developmentally appropriate gratitude practices can strengthen mental health, boost social bonds, and foster resilience—especially when those practices are modeled and reinforced by adults.

Start small, make routines predictable and authentic, and adapt strategies to each child’s developmental stage and cultural context.

Over time, these practices help young people cultivate a stable lens of appreciation that supports emotional well-being and prosocial living throughout adolescence and into adulthood.